“Look,” I say. “The last thing I want to do is make you uncomfortable.”
“I know,” you say. “I feel the same way.”
I don’t speak. You don’t speak. You told me so much last night but I am getting that sick feeling that you didn’t tell me everything, that what you told me isn’t the whole story, but only part of the story. You are looking at me as if you are warming me up for the news. The bad news. The worst news in the world.
And here it comes. Those treacherous words: “Joe… we can’t do this. You didn’t tell anyone, did you?”
“Of course not, Mary Kay. You know I’d never do that…”
You are too relieved. “Okay, good, because if anyone here found out… if anyone said anything to Nomi…”
“Mary Kay, look at me.”
You look at me. “I am a steel fucking trap. You have my word.”
You calm down a little, but you’re still flinching, looking over your shoulder, a paranoid inmate on Crucible Island. You don’t let me talk. You say that last night was a drunken mistake—no—and you weren’t thinking clearly—yes you fucking were—and I tell you that you were perfect and you shudder. “I am anything but perfect.”
My words are coming out all wrong and I know you’re not perfect. I’m not perfect, but it would be too cheesy and needy to tell you that we are perfect together.
You purse your lips, those lips that are puffy from my kiss. Me. “Can we just go back to normal? You know… how we were?”
I bob my head like a trained seal that couldn’t make it in the wild. “Absolutely,” I say. “I wasn’t expecting to rush into anything with you. We can take it slow. I want to take it slow.”
It’s a big fat lie and you cluck. “That’s the thing, Joe. There is no ‘it.’ There can’t be an ‘it.’ I have a daughter.”
“I know.”
“I can’t be getting home drunk after midnight. She has to come first.”
“Of course Nomi comes first. I know that.”
You hide your face behind your hands and tell me that you’re not emotionally available right now and I want to take a sledgehammer to the chip in the windshield and smash the glass because you’re making our kiss about your daughter. You pull your hands away. “It’s her senior year, Joe, and I don’t want to miss any part of it…” Then don’t spend two nights a week at a fucking wine bar with Melanda. “She needs me. She doesn’t have a lot of friends.” You raised an independent daughter who likes to read and so what if she’s not a minisocialite the way you were? Neither was I at that age. “To you she’s halfway out the door, all grown-up… But time flies and it’s almost Thanksgiving and in a few months, she’ll be away. And I just can’t make any big changes when change is already coming.” Ha! As if life is ever that predictable and you should let me in now, right now, so that I’m carving your turkey next week and you are wrong, so wrong and you sigh. “Do you get it?”
“Of course I get it, Mary Kay. You’re right, there’s no rush. We can put this on hold.”
You smile. “What a relief. Thank you, Joe.”
You win because you built the boxing ring—Me vs. Nomi—and I can’t hit above the belt, in the womb. That said, you came to see me and you wouldn’t be justifying yourself to me if you didn’t care about me, if you didn’t want me eating your mashed potatoes and your Murakami. Yeah, there was something off about your little speech, Mary Kay, because deep down, you know you belong with me now, right now.
Our chairs squeak when we stand and you hang your head. “Do you hate me?”
You’re better than that. You don’t ask stupid questions. But I give you the stupid answer you deserve right now. “Of course I don’t hate you. Come on. You know that.”
Then you bite your lip and say the worst word in the English language. “Friends?”
You cannot shove me onto a tufted sofa with Seamus and Melanda and we’re not friends, Mary Kay. You want to fuck me. But I shake your hand and repeat your hollow sitcom of a word that does not apply to us. “Friends.”
6
I go outside. I walk and I walk and my pinky toes burn—these sneakers are for show, not for this—and I walk away from your house and I want to walk into your house and I really did fuck up last night, today. I should have torn off your chastity tights. I should have brought you home or I should have gone home with you and there is no going back and I am the man. Bainbridge is safe, but did I text you to make sure you got home okay?
Nope.
You’d been drinking and did I insist on being your escort?
Nope.
I walk into Blackbird and the whole fecal-eyed family is in here—even the grandfather—and this island is too fucking small and there are so many of them and there is only one of me and I get a coffee and sit outside on a bench.
I go on Instagram. Bad Joe. Bad. Night is falling and Nomi posted a picture of you on your sofa and you are asleep in your clothes.
When mom is “sick.” #Hangover.
I wish I could like this picture, I wish I could love this picture but I don’t feel the love right now. My toes are on fire, my whole body is on fire but you’re out cold, dead to me, to the world. I take a screenshot of the photo and examine every corner, every centimeter. I’m not invading your privacy, Mary Kay. We all post our photos knowing that our followers will zoom in to grade us. I zoom in. My heart beats.
The fecal-eyed family barges onto the street and none of them say hello—FUCK YOU, FAMILY—and I look down at my phone and what the hell, Mary Kay? There’s a bottle of beer on the end table that makes my blistered toes pound. You don’t drink beer, you don’t like the taste and you don’t let Nomi drink beer and the bottle is open, half empty. Whose is it, Mary Kay? Who the fuck is drinking beer in your house? I send a text to Shortus.
Hey Seamus! That gym kicked my ass today. Beer?
I wait and I walk. My toes are never going to speak to me again.
No can do, New Guy. Doing a ten day dry out. Remember: That voice in your head that says you can’t do it is a liar.
Ugh. I hate gym culture and the beer isn’t his, but whose is it? I reach the beginning of your street and your house is close but if I walk down that street and look in your window… I can’t. I promised I would be good and being good means believing in you, in us, and hey, it’s just one beer. You did look bad today. I don’t know everything about you and it’s possible that you drink a half a beer to take the edge off when you’re hungover and I go home and watch more Succession and you don’t call, you don’t text and Shortus hits me up to tell me that we can get a beer next week maybe and phones have made it so easy to be friends without ever having to see your friends and that’s one good thing about today. One.
* * *
I did it. I survived the longest most mind-fuckiest day of the year and my mind is clear again. I’m calm. I’m not gonna let one stupid bottle of beer get in our way. All that matters is the kiss, Mary Kay. You broke a rule for me. You swore that you would never get involved with some guy while your daughter lives at home and you did.
And you know what? I need to bend a rule too.
This is a scenic island and I’ve barely done any exploring—I will not go to Fort Fucking Ward without you—and okay, yeah. I went on a couple of nature walks in the Grand Forest when I first moved here, but I was too raw to really breathe any of it in.
I tie the laces on my running shoes—my toes won’t hate me today—and I zip up my hoodie and I put on my headphones—Hello, Sam Cooke—and I lock up the house and do what all the well-rounded motherfucking men around here do every day, some of them twice a day: run.
I could run on one of the beaches but the coast is rocky and mottled by McMansions. I could run on the sidewalks but why should I waste my time on pavement when I can run in the woods? I didn’t design the island, Mary Kay. And it’s not my fault that your house is in a development. It’s not my fault that you chose to live in a waterfront home where the only thing that separates your backyard f
rom the sea is a two-foot-wide trail that is open to the public.
Your choice, not mine.
I didn’t know you when I moved here and you’re the one who told me that you live right around the corner. You’ve said it a dozen times and you weren’t lying and I’m here, not on your street, but on the trail by the water and Jesus Christ, Mary Kay. There’s something almost perverse about this trail, about you and your neighbors in Wesley Landing. You’re all fearless exhibitionists, aren’t you? You all choose to live on land that is the opposite of private. You don’t have fences because fences would block your access to the trail, your view of the foliage, the rocky coast, the water and I would never live like this.
But you do.
I stop to stretch, as all runners must do to keep the muscles loose. Healthy.
There’s a large rock on the property line of your house, engraved with the name of your community. It’s wider than the trunks of the trees and this is the perfect place for me to stretch my calves. I plant my feet against the back and lean over and it feels good to stretch and as luck would have it—and at some point my luck did have to turn around—I have a view of your deck. Who knew?
Your sliding glass door is open and you sit on your deck with a half-empty bottle of Diet Coke. See that, Mary Kay? You do need me. You sure as fuck don’t need any more sugar substitutes. You’re on the phone, no doubt with Melanda, and I turn off Sam Cooke and remove my headphones the way a lot of people do when they stretch. I can’t hear you and I’m no botanist, but I think there might be poison ivy where I am, so to be safe, I move to another tree. You’re used to the people in the woods, on the trails, and you don’t flinch at the leaves crunching beneath my feet. I can hear you now. You don’t know what to make for dinner. You have salmon steaks in the freezer but they’re frostbitten—you need a new freezer, you need to see my freezer—and now you’re back to counseling Melanda. Don’t text him. You know how it is. If he likes you, he’ll text you, and if he doesn’t like you, then it’s his loss. She’s arguing—can’t hear her, don’t need to hear her—and the Meerkat is in the kitchen, slamming cabinets. Annoyed. You ask Melanda to hold on and you turn your head.
“Nomi, honey, do you want salmon?”
“Do I ever want salmon? It’s like a hundred years old. And before you say it, no, I don’t want Mexican chicken.”
You laugh—you’re sick of your own chicken too—and sigh. Oh, to be a mother and cook every day for thousands of days and be tired of your own Mexican chicken.
The Meerkat slams another cabinet. “Can we cook out on the grill?”
“Well, I guess so… Are you already hungry?”
The Meerkat shrugs—whatever—and she grabs a bag of Tostitos and stomps off to her room. You go back to Melanda and I feel for Melanda, who’s probably contemplating a singleton cauliflower pizza. “Sorry,” you say. “I’m back.”
You get a text and you read the text and you respond to the text and is it the man who drank that domestic beer on your end table? You’re still counseling Melanda, but what about us? When is it your turn to tell her about the Best Kiss of Your Life? And seriously. Who drank that fucking beer?
The acid is cooling in my thighs but it’s burning in my heart and you shiver and stand. You go into your kitchen and you close the screen door. You close the slider and it squeaks—you need WD-40—and I can’t bear the silence so I put on my headphones. Sam Cooke tries to comfort me but he’s wasting his time. I touch my fingers to my toes and the blood rushes to my head and my headphones cancel the noise of the world, but they can’t silence the alarm in my limbic system, the one that dings now. Goosebumps crop up on my arms and my legs as the hairs on the back of my neck stand up straight, so many tiny soldiers. Fight or flight. Slowly, I lift my head and the alarm in my brain was right. Someone is here. Three feet away. Armed with a backpack and a cell phone and the two most dangerous weapons in these woods: eyes, blinking beneath unflattering round glasses.
It’s your daughter. The Meerkat.
7
On Animal Planet, this is how the lion dies. The lion has no natural predators but an intrusive human on a mission to break the rules of nature shoots him for the fuck of it.
“Hey,” she says. “You know that’s my house, right?”
I close my eyes. Please, God. Please don’t kill me now.
The Meerkat remains standing. Emotionless. Still. “Are you okay?”
“Yeah,” I say. “I got a cramp.”
She nods. Distracted. Good sign. “One time this old guy died out here. It was summer. He had a heart attack.”
That stings a little but it also snaps me out of my paranoia. “Well, I’m not that old.”
“Sorry,” she says. “I’m just in a mood because my mom’s making me go get charcoal.”
Ah, so you were texting with your Meerkat. “You going to the Town & Country?”
She furrows her brow. “We just call it the T & C. God, you’re such a newbie still.”
That was a little vicious, but it’s the same with kids as it is with adults. It’s never about you. It’s about them. She knows she was rude and she squeezes the straps of her backpack and I smile. Cool Joe. Affable Joe. “I’ll head there too,” I say. “I could use a Vitaminwater.”
Now we’re walking and this is normal. This is what people do when they bump into each other and the Meerkat truly isn’t alarmed to see me and here comes another jogger—Hey, Nomi!—and she knows him too and I flinch at a dog barking in the woods and she laughs. “It’s just a dog! Are you scared of dogs?”
“No,” I say. I’m still rattled but I have to remember. I was caught off guard, yes. But I wasn’t caught. “I’m just out of my comfort zone. You grew up in all this but the woods are creepy to me.”
I remember taking RIP Beck to the woods and I shudder and the Meerkat grunts. “Oh please,” she says. “These aren’t woods. The real woods are up by my old school. See, when I was in middle school, I found this old Buick there.”
I nod. “Cool.”
“Yeah…” She sounded like you just then. “There were all these empty alcohol bottles…” She’s so young for her age. Alcohol. “And the year before that, there was this big abandoned house in the woods too. That place was supercool. It used to be a home for wayward boys.”
I raise my eyebrows like a good listener. “Whoa.”
“Now that was creepy. You go up to the fourth floor and you think the house is gonna fall down and there are old-fashioned wheelchairs and cobwebs. It was so cool. But, whatever. Everything cool here gets destroyed.”
“That’s just called ‘growing up.’ See, down at Isla, I listen to these old guys, actual old guys, and they sound like you.”
“Like me? I don’t think so.”
“Oh sure, Nomi. They talk about how this place used to be too, how nobody locked their doors and they left the keys in the car and didn’t worry about anyone breaking in because there were more crickets and frogs than people.”
“I don’t think that’s true.”
“Well, that’s the point. Every generation thinks their way was the best way.”
“But the home for wayward boys… that was actually cool. It was a place to go. Then they tore it down and now there’s nothing.”
We step aside for a set of cyclists.
“So you’re from New York or something, right?”
That’s a good sign, Mary Kay. A show of actual social skills! “Yep,” I say. “And it was nothing like this. My library is a good example. We had homeless people in there, crackheads… now that was scary.”
“At least it’s real. Everything here is fake, fake, fake.”
She tugs on the straps of her backpack and I’m so relieved that I’m an adult. What a nightmare it is to be a teenager, to think there’s a place where everyone isn’t fake, fake, fake. “Sorry,” she says. “I’m just mad. My mom always goes crazy before Thanksgiving but this year she’s crazy-crazy.”
Crazy in Love. “Oh?”
> “We always stay here but now she’s dragging us to Arizona to see my papa.”
I wish I had backpack straps to grab because this is news to me. Be cool, Joe. “Well, maybe Phoenix will be fun.”
She just grunts—yeah right. “So what do you do for stupid Thanksgiving?”
Franzen essays and frozen pizza. “I might hop a ferry and volunteer at a soup kitchen.”
She waves at a woman raking leaves and the woman waves back and we are normal. This is normal. But then Nomi gives me what the kids call “side eye.” “but you said you hated the city. You know there’s no soup kitchen here, right?”
“Hate’s a strong word, Nomi. And I like it here, but on a day like that, it’s nice to get out there and help people in need.”
She just stares ahead. “People never say that love is a strong word.”
Is she high? No. She’s just overdosing on Klebold poems and loneliness. “Huh. Why do you think that is?”
“Whatever. I’m just annoyed cuz my mom told me not to say I hate her but she took my Columbine again and I have all these notes in it and I do hate her for that and dragging us to Phoenix. Anyone would. And don’t tell me she’s just looking out for me. You’re wrong. She’s a hypocrite. She’s mad because it’s Columbine. She wouldn’t be mad if I was into some stupid story about horny babysitters and I’m sorry but Columbine is the best. It is the book.”
And now I miss being a teenager, that salty conviction that you have found it, the thing that makes your mind make sense to you. You’d want me to be compassionate, so I tell her I get it, that I too love that book. She just looks at me. Suspicious Meerkat eyes. And no wonder. Adults lie all the time, but not this one!
“All right,” I say. “The part that really stuck with me was all the Eric stuff, fooling his probation officer, how easy it was for him to convince all these so-called smart adults that he was okay. That’s the problem with this country, the Injustice System is pretty ineffective.”
You Love Me Page 6